Beginnings:<\/strong><\/p>\nGloria Steinem\u2019s understanding of a woman\u2019s struggle began in Toledo, Ohio. Her parents separated when she was ten because her mother was an invalid. Her mother’s struggles to hold a job and to live while sick were pivotal to Steinem understanding the social injustices faced by women. Though she never blamed her father, it was because of the separation that she first began to see the injustices women faced. Steinem graduated Western High School in Washington, D.C. and then Smith College before starting her journalism career.<\/p>\n
Steinem credits her coverage of a 1969 abortion speak-out as the day she truly became an activist. As Steinem herself had had an abortion, this was a personal issue to her. Though abortion was highly shameful and considered an atrocity, and was in face illegal, at the time Steinem thought about it differently. “Speaking for myself, I knew it was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life. I wasn’t going to let things happen to me. I was going to direct my life, and therefore it felt positive. But still, I didn’t tell anyone. Because I knew that out there it wasn’t [positive].”\u00a0 Steinem is credited with coining the phrase \u201creproductive freedom\u201d and abortion was just one of the many topics she has tackled, but she certainly believes it was the first to make her see the need for activism. Steinem had begun to question what was expected of her as a woman and societies beliefs as to who she was supposed to be.<\/p>\n
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Major Accomplishments:<\/strong><\/p>\nPlayboy Bunny Experiment (New York, 1963)<\/span> – In 1963 Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club to discover the working conditions and reality of being a Playboy Bunny. The resulting article highlighted and detailed how women were treated at the clubs. This article became widely renowned as the first of its kind, an in-depth look at the treatment of women as sex objects, and led to Steinem being employed at New York magazine in 1968, where she would found Ms. Magazine.<\/p>\nThe National Women\u2019s Political Caucus and the Equal Rights Amendment (New York, 1970-1971)<\/span> – Gloria Steinem truly became the figurehead for women\u2019s rights when she advocated for the Equal Rights Amendment in front of the Senate in 1970. She had also written an article for Time Magazine entitled \u201cWhat It Would Be Like If Women Win\u201d which established her as a leader above the rest in the movement. Steinem soon co-founded the National Women\u2019s Political Caucus, one of her most famous achievements, an origination created to encourage women to vote in the 1972 election. One of Steinem\u2019s most famous speeches, “Address to the Women of America”, was written for the Caucus\u2019 cause. In the speech Steinem questions the place of women in American society and encourages others to do the same.<\/p>\n\u201cThis is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nIt was through speeches like this that Steinem grew to gain popularity and spread the feminist message. Women were sick and tired of the expectations of society and being looked down upon for their gender.<\/p>\n
Ms. Magazine (New York, 1972)<\/span> – When Steinem founded Ms. Magazine, the first feminist publication of its kind, it became obvious how widespread her message was. Though it was initially only meant to be a one shot special edition, it became an incredible hit and sold out nation-wide in three days.\u00a0 In no time at all, the magazine had 26,000 subscriptions. Ms. Magazine was the first magazine to truly put women\u2019s rights issues into the spotlight. Ms. Magazine was the first truly feminist publication and soon became one of the most influential in the nation. The magazine tackled many women\u2019s rights issued that were considered taboo and thus not publicly discussed. The very first issue of Ms, for instance, contained a feature titled: “We have had abortions.\u201d It was signed by many of the most famous women of the time, not necessarily because they had had abortions but because they supported a woman\u2019s right to have an abortion. It wasn\u2019t even a year later that Roe v Wade passed and abortion was legalised. Ms. Was the first magazine to push the women of the United States to question why men have a say in what happens with a woman\u2019s body or in women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\nLeadership:<\/strong><\/p>\nLearning to Question \u2013 Everything Gloria Steinem achieved for the women\u2019s rights movement was born out of questioning the expectations and views of society regarding women.\u00a0 What culture dictated to be the role of a woman was not what Gloria Steinem wanted. The expectancy of women to become wives and mothers, and for that to be the ultimate goal, was not something Steinem believed to be right. She became the figurehead for women\u2019s rights because of her unrelenting nature in the fight for equality. Her questioning of society\u2019s expectations was a major factor in the success of the feminist movement. \u00a0Gloria Steinem pushed the women of the 60s and 70s to question the world as she did and lead the fight for gender equality.<\/p>\n
Criticism:<\/strong><\/p>\nThough Gloria Steinem is an amazing leader in the women\u2019s rights movement she has been criticized for pitting race against gender. Some believe that Steinem pushes gender equality as being more important than racial equality or that she compares the two on the basis of racial equality being considered more important. Steinem also has made several trans-phobic comments and admitted to some trans-phobic views. She has stated that she believes that people who are transgender or transsexual harm their bodies in order to conform to gender roles and that feminist should feel uncomfortable about the future of transsexualism and what it means for the feminist movement. Gloria Steinem is a truly\u00a0phenomenal\u00a0leader in the feminist movement, she certainly has her own prejudices and this can sometimes make her arguments for equality seem less valid.<\/p>\n
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Bibliography<\/span>:<\/p>\nCooke, Rachel. (2011). Gloria Steinem: ‘I think we need to get much angrier.\u2019\u00a0The Observer<\/em>.<\/p>\nCruikshank, Barbara. (1993). Revolutions within: self-government and self-esteem.\u00a0Economy & Society 22, no. 3,<\/em>\u00a0327.<\/p>\nDavis, Susan. (1973). Women and Capitalism: A Conversation with Gloria Steinem. Business & Society Review\/Innovation no. 7,<\/em> 4.<\/p>\nHoward, Ella. (2010). PINK TRUCK ADS: Second-Wave Feminism and Gendered Marketing.\u00a0Journal Of Women’s History 22, no. 4,<\/em>\u00a0137-161.<\/p>\nLewis, Jone. (2012). Gloria Steinem Quotes.\u00a0About<\/em>.<\/p>\nPreskill, Stephen, and Stephen D. Brookfield. (2009). Learning as a way of Leading: Lessons from the Struggle for Social Justice.\u00a0Jossey-Bass<\/em>.<\/p>\nSteinem, Gloria, and Anna Myers-Parrelli. (1995). Steps toward transformation: A conversation with Gloria Steinem.\u00a0Women & Therapy 17, no. 3\/4,<\/em>\u00a0477.<\/em><\/p>\nSteinem, Gloria.(1998). 30th Anniversary Issue.\u00a0New York Magazine<\/em>.<\/p>\nGloria Steinem. (1969). After Black Power, Women’s Liberation.\u00a0New York Magazine<\/em>, 8-9.<\/p>\nWhittier, Nancy. (2002). PERSISTENCE AND TRANSFORMATION: Gloria Steinem, the Women’s Action Alliance, and the Feminist Movement, 1971 – 1997. Journal Of Women’s History 14, no. 2,\u00a0<\/em>1.<\/p>\nZeitz, J. (2008). Rejecting the Center: Radical Grassroots Politics in the 1970s: Second-wave Feminism as a Case Study.\u00a0Journal Of Contemporary History 43, no. 4,<\/em>\u00a0673-688.<\/em><\/p>\nZukin, Cliff, et al. (2006). A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen.\u00a0Oxford University Press<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By: Michaela Wiberg, Wagner College ’16 \u201cLaw and justice are not always the same. When they aren’t, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it.\u201d \u2013 Gloria Steinem In the 1970s Gloria Steinem was a household name. At the time she was a journalist and women\u2019s rights activist but she would become […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-leaders","et-bg-layout-dark","et-background-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wagner.edu\/lori-weintrob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wagner.edu\/lori-weintrob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wagner.edu\/lori-weintrob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wagner.edu\/lori-weintrob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wagner.edu\/lori-weintrob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wagner.edu\/lori-weintrob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wagner.edu\/lori-weintrob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wagner.edu\/lori-weintrob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wagner.edu\/lori-weintrob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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